The Incredibles (2004)

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The Incredibles is exhilarating
entertainment with unexpected depths. It’s a bold, bright, funny
and furious superhero cartoon that dares to take sly jabs at the
culture of entitlement, from the shallow doctrine of self-esteem
that affirms everybody, encouraging mediocrity and penalizing
excellence, to the litigation culture that demands recompense for
everyone if anything ever happens, to the detriment of the
genuinely needy.

Age Appropriateness

MPAA Rating

Caveat Spectator

Like Spy Kids, The
Incredibles is a romantic celebration of marriage and family
as an act of heroism, while it also acknowledges the sacrifices
that parents make by giving up the pursuit of their own
self-fulfillment for the sake of the domestic good. It knows what
Spy Kids knew but Unbreakable didn’t, that being a
husband and father calls for a kind of heroism beyond that of
superheroes or superspies.

The Incredibles recognizes the sacrifice made by a
father who spends his day away from his family sitting in
rush-hour traffic and marking time in a cubicle. It also
acknowledges that a mother who gives up a career and works as a
homemaker while her husband leads a life outside the home that
may seem or may be comparatively exciting also sacrifices for her
family. In its comic-book way, the film pays tribute to how far a
mother will stretch and how flexible she will be to hold her
family together, and to how deeply a father wants to protect his
family and how inadequate he feels to the task, even if he is Mr.
Incredible.

The Incredibles suggests that to be able to look up to
others, to have heroes, far from being a threat to self-esteem,
is an inspiring thing — but it equally recognizes the dark side
of excessive hero worship. It also points out that how we treat
people, especially children who look up to us, can have
far-reaching repercussions on who they become and what happens as
a result. It shows us a world fraught with danger and threats — frightening weapons, amoral geeks who use technology to harm
others, evil insurance companies, frivolous lawsuits, romantic
temptations, supercilious Frenchmen. In this world, the film
warns, it can be dangerous not to be realistic about our
limitations, but it can also be dangerous to be paralyzed by
doubt or fear, to be unable to act to defend ourselves.

The Incredibles does all this — and it does it in a
colorful family cartoon in which super powers, giant robots,
self-destructing messages, and monologuing villains with remote
underground lairs coexist with trips to the principal’s office,
sibling rivalry, and the funny faces parents make to get babies
to take a bite.

Leave it to writer-director Brad Bird (The Iron Giant) and the geniuses at
Pixar.

It’s an ideal collaboration, a perfect storm of heart, wit,
energy, and style. The Incredibles is Pixar’s first film
with human characters in leading rather than supporting roles — to say nothing of the first cartoon from anyone in
goodness knows when with leading characters consisting of a
positively portrayed, intact family (working father, homemaker
mom, and three kids, no less), that doesn’t kill off or get rid
of one or both parents by the end of the first act.

Bird’s jaunty visual style brings a flair to the design of the
Incredibles that’s stylistically as beyond the look of earlier
Pixar humans (e.g., the dentist in Finding Nemo, Al the chicken man in
Toy Story 2) as the old
Looney Tunes characters (e.g., Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck) are
beyond the more pedestrian-looking characters of the 1990s
Animaniacs series (e.g., Slappy Squirrel).

The story opens with Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson),
Metroville’s answer to Superman and Batman, at the top of his
game. Zipping through the streets in his Incredimobile, he can
literally turn in a split second from rescuing an old lady’s cat
in a tree to intercepting a fleeing getaway car. No wonder
wide-eyed young Buddy (Jason Lee), president of the Mr.
Incredible fan club, wants to be his sidekick. "I work alone,"
Mr. I says firmly.

He’s a bit less firm about it in a rooftop encounter with
rubber-limbed heroine Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), and it’s obvious
that they’re made for each other. Not much later, at the altar,
the bride turns to her husband-to-be and whispers, "You do
realize that if we’re going to make this work, you’re going to
need to be more than just Mr. Incredible?"

If domestic life will require Mr. I — or Bob Parr, as he’s
also known — to be something more than a superhero, the world in
which he lives will soon require him to be something less. The
sunny days of 1950s trust in institutions like your friendly
neighborhood superhero are ending, with cynical 1960s questioning
of authority right around the corner. Suddenly, supers are being
sued for unsolicited acts of heroism, and squinting media
scrutiny calls for "their secret identities to be their
only identities."

Soon lawsuits force the supers to hang up their supersuits,
and the government establishes a Super Relocation Program to move
former heroes into all-civilian life. Now Bob finds himself
facing the daily grind of rush-hour traffic and eight hours a day
in a cubicle working for an evil insurance company, where his
natural instincts to aid people conflict with his unstated duty
to be as unhelpful as possible to clients making claims.

But that’s not all. He and Helen now have three children, two
in school, who are also expected not to stand out among their
peers, though boisterous young Dash (Spencer Fox) can run like
Kid Flash, and adolescent, painfully shy Violet (Sarah Vowell),
who hides behind peekaboo tresses that are among the computer
wizards’ most noteworthy technical achievements, can turn
invisible and generate forcefields just like the Fantastic Four’s
Invisible Girl.

Poor Dash can’t understand why he has to hide his gifts at
school. "You always say our powers make us special," he says
accusingly to his mother.

"Everybody’s special," Helen tries to explain.

"Which is another way of saying nobody is," Dash grumbles.

That, of course, is precisely the point: If some children
excel or stand out, others will feel inferior, which could be
detrimental to their self-esteem. Driving home the point, Bob
later defends his lack of interest in Dash’s "graduation" by
pointing out that moving from fourth grade to fifth grade is not
a "graduation," and that pretending it is is part of a pattern of
"celebrating mediocrity" and discouraging excellence.

In one scene, frustrated by the annoyance of the day’s
commute, Bob accidentally blows his cover, revealing his
super-strength to a saucer-eyed kid on a tricycle. After that,
Bob finds the tot loitering around from time to time. "What are
you waiting for?" he asks impatiently.

"I don’t know, something amazing," is the hopeful answer.

"So am I," Bob replies sadly.

Bob’s nostalgia for the glory days is understandable, but it
leads him to make mistakes. Soon he’s effectively leading another
double life, keeping his actions secret not only from the public
but also from his family. It begins with minor heroics during
Bob’s weekly night out with a friend from the old days, Frozone
(Samuel L. Jackson), who exudes coolness in his attitude as well
as with his powers. Then Bob is introduced by the mysterious
Mirage (Elizabeth Peña), who represents an exotic world of
high-powered challenges and handsome rewards that suck him in,
while Helen obliviously goes about her housework, thinking he’s
on a business trip.

This is tricky emotional territory for young viewers, but
The Incredibles handles matters with grace. There’s
surprising nuance in Bob and Helen’s relationship, which is
loving but not without friction, and while Bob will eventually
have to face up to the fact that his response to his midlife
crisis was wrong and unfair to his family, he doesn’t come off
like a jerk. Indeed, his nobility impresses even one of his
adversaries, who criticizes the other for jeering at the hero:
"Respect for life is not a weakness — and disregard for it is not
strength!"

Eventually Helen wises up and swings into action, and even
Violet and Dash find themselves in a world of their parents’
stories from before they were born. Like many parents before her,
Elastigirl realizes that she can’t always shield her children
from all that could harm them, and must encourage them to find
the strength in themselves to face the world as best they
can.

If something goes wrong, Elastigirl tells Dash, "I want you to
run as fast as you can." The little speedster, who all his life
has been told to slow down, can hardly believe what he’s hearing:
"Really? As fast as I can?"

Meanwhile, the storytelling bristles with wit and constant
invention. Among many highlights, one of the best set pieces is a
brilliant sequence in which Elastigirl infiltrates the villain’s
lair and runs into a series of increasing complications. And in a
film less thematically rich than this one, I would certainly have
mentioned before now the film’s most hilarious character, tiny,
imperious Edna Mode (voiced by Bird himself), fashionista to the
superhero set, whose devastating critique of capes will forever
alter my perception of hero couture.

It’s saying too little to call The Incredibles one of
the best superhero movies of all time. This is family
entertainment of the highest order, ranking with the very best of
Pixar’s impressive body of work. Walking out of the theater with
my kids, I felt like that tyke on the trike: I’ve just seen
something amazing, and I want to come back and see it
again.

Mail

I wanted to thank you for your review of Lilo & Stitch. It prompted me to rent the movie and I was delighted to see it live up to expectations and more. I suspect you won’t mind, but since your review prompted my watching the movie, I mentioned it in my own blog and reflection on the movie within the context of Lent. Thank you for a thoughtful reflection that prompted me to see a movie I wouldn’t otherwise consider.

I watched The Incredibles again with my family — this time with the subtitles (a habit I picked up after watching the “Firefly” series and movie finale Serenity and realizing I was missing a lot of clever bits of extra dialogue).

Because of the subtitles, I was alerted to the name of the island where Mr. Incredible goes to fight the Omnidroid — it is mentioned in his last trip to the island as they approach: “Nomanisan”. Yet again the folks at Pixar showed an awareness of their plot, the themes in the movie (which you succinctly pointed out in your review) — as well as subtle and clever ways to highlight them if you’re looking for them — and sometimes even when you’re not.

I wonder what other little treasures are hiding in the subtitles (or elsewhere) of Pixar’s films? I look forward to finding out in the re-watching — this time with the subtitles on! Thank you for your work here at Decent Films, and God bless you.